27.7.11

Guest blogger time! Nixon Newman (seriously) writes from Wetherspoons (probably)...I remember the first time I heard this I was working in a mental hospital. I was in this lad's room about to give him a clopixol jab and this came on the radio. I went to Cardiff with the ex missus a few days later and bought the single in Spillers in The Hayes. We went for a few drinks and I was sitting in these various pubs watching all these young blokes in their cheap looking suits and their lilac shirts having a pint in their lunchbreaks. Like one pint of Carlsberg or something. The penny dropped. I was never going to be like that - I knew that once I'd started drinking I could never stop until I was pissed, and I drank everyday. It was a massive turning point .Anyway, I listened to the record over and over, as if I was 14. They're quite clever I think, musically and lyrically.

23.7.11

I know this is a rather lazy way to go about the blogging, sticking up things from video sharing sites, but this will be of interest to admirers of The Smiths and Morrissey ( and, of course, admirers of Miss Delaney and literature of the 1950's and 1960's, the whole so called Kitchen Sink genre, the New Wave of British Cinema... it will interest social historians, historians of Salford, of Manchester; students of popular culture, of Ken Russell...)
From Monitor (1960) Directed by Ken Russell.
Tall, ain't she?

When Ian Dury was an art student in Walthamstow in 1961, Peter Blake, who was teaching there part time, asked him what sort of things he liked. Dury listed rock and roll, boxing, wrestling, tits and bums, gangsters, teddy boys, Jayne Mansfield and Marlon Brando.
No bonuses here- the original 10 tracks. A genuine masterpiece.

9.7.11

Back in the early 80's I remember Discharge getting a slating in one of the righteous music weeklies because 'three lines doesn't make a song'. Emerging from the hardcore/ anarcho punk scene Napalm Death took the blast beat/ noise element of the music to its logical conclusion and pioneered the 'microsong'. These minimalist numbers made Discharge's efforts seem like sprawling prog rock epics. This album includes their greatest song- You Suffer... But Why?
Drummer Mick Harris recalls the bemusement of early audiences who weren't sure if they were 'serious' band or a wind up.

6.7.11

Genres... fuck 'em. I was going to label this 'punk' in the same way I might label early Sonic Youth 'punk'.
This is the LP that gave Mick Harris of Napalm Death the idea for 'grind' as in 'grindcore'. It rumbles like a menacing machine. Delightfully the Swans were also known to play at very high volume, which, of course enhances the effect of doom. I was going to write impending doom, but it's not impending at all, it's already arrived.